January 2021

Monthly Newsletter | January 2021 | Volume 21

Dear Readers,

I wish you a very happy new year.

Another month has elapsed amid uncertainties as well as anticipations, as the year drew to a close we witnessed developments in the education arena that are both adaptive and progressive.

In this edition, we have picked up the items that represent the struggles, and adaptations and highlight the drift of policy in the times of the pandemic.

We have included the Delhi state’s scrapping of nursery admissions, an update on CBSE board exams, the situation of the EWS students in the wake of the pandemic, the struggles of the low-budget private schools and to understand the situation in perspective, we have included an item from the US concerning the public school enrollments there.

I hope that the New Year will give us the fruits of resilience we have shown in the last year and that we will build educational systems more vibrant than they ever were.

Happy Holidays !

Vinod Kakumanu

Come 2021, Schools set to reopen for class 10 and 12 in Karnataka

Department of Primary and Secondary Education, Karnataka has signaled the reopening of the PU colleges after a 9 month hiatus. The students of class 10 and 12 will be attending physical classes starting from January 1.

The decision for reopening of schools for ...

Delhi may scrap nursery admissions for 2021-22, schools unlikely to open before July

In an important development, the Delhi government has proposed to scrap and suspend admissions in the nursery for the 2021-22 academic year. The state is considering to implement the scrapping of admissions in 2021 and proposing the same for privat...

CBSE Board Exams not to start until February end

According to the Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the CBSE board exams for classes 10 and 12 will happen only after February 2021.

The minister stopped speculations by stating that the exam schedule will be decided after an assessment of the situation.

The...

Economically Weaker Section students are among the hardest hit in the course of the pandemic

According to a government survey, as many as 27 percent of children in center funded government schools do not have access to devices that are critical to participate in the online classes.

The survey in question has indicated that the most affected ones are the children of the migrants. The lack of awareness about the educational resources offered by the state governments coupled with their dropout status from their home town schools lead to the situation of academic deprivation.

The Delhi government has recently disclosed that around 15 percent of the children enrolled in the government schools have become untraceable i.e. they are not attending the e-classes and could not be contacted, primarily due to migration. The number of government schools in Delhi is around 1100 and 1.5 million students are enrolled in them.

As if the government statis...